New Open 60 for Golding

Mike Golding announces his Vendee Globe plans

Mike Golding has today announced that he is having a new boat built for the Vendee Globe 2004, funded by his present sponsor, Ecover, the Belgium-based manufacturer of ecologically-friendly cleaning products.

Construction of his new Owen-Clarke Open 60 is underway at Southern Ocean Marine in Tauranga, New Zealand, the same yard where Graham Dalton's Hexagon was built. Remarkably, because it was kept quiet for so long, work started on the boat back in October.

In his bid to turn his business Mike Golding Yacht Racing (MGYR) into more of an Offshore Challenges-style sailing sports marketing company Golding says he has decided to hang on to his old Groupe Finot designed Open 60, with a view to finding a new skipper to drive it and a new sponsor to back it.

"Our performance has been pretty good with the current Finot but when you look at the other boats around us, it is clearly a struggle," Golding told The Daily Sail. "I think we are doing as much as we can with the hardware we have got, but sometimes we are not getting the desired effect because we are just a little bit off the pace. And a new boat designed to the rule - which you have to remember the Finot is not - will give me the edge maybe I have been missing."

His old Open 60, originally called Team Group 4 was built prior to the last Around Alone, and the introduction of new stability rules for the Open 60 class were introduced. Sill and Kingfisher were both built subsequent to its introduction.

"The reason for the production of the new boat is because if I am going to go back and do that bloody race again I don’t want to leave any stone unturned!" Golding continues. "So that is the thinking - I am very purist in my approach. I have to give myself a fair shot. We have been competing against Sill and Kingfisher for the last few years, and it is a struggle. We are doing better and better. Sill and Kingfisher have both got room for further development and we are running out of things to modify..."

Golding says that his old benefactor and former Group 4 boss Jorgen-Philip Sorensen, who is a majority shareholder in Ecover, has not been involved in the deal. "Although JPS has been involved in the inception of this, this is not a JPS deal. It is a deal between Ecover and MGYR. We are on a contract and on a finite amount of money. We have a commercial team that are out there trying to sell the thing. We are a proper commercial entity."

The decision to continue the sponsorship was made by Mike Bremans, Managing Director of Ecover, following their testing the water with Golding in events such as the Transat Jacques Vabre and the Route du Rhum. "Our sponsorship of Mike Golding Yacht Racing has lead to a massive presence of our brand name in the media and that's our main aim - to increase the recognition of our brand and ecological messages," commented Bremans. "Both Mike and Ecover rely on the power of nature - it’s a perfect match, so we are delighted to announce a long-term relationship, allowing us to realise maximum value for the company. We will be promoting our entire range of ecological cleaning products across the world using the yacht racing and power of nature themes. It's an exciting time for us all."

The sponsorship deal with Ecover runs through to the end of the Vendee Globe, but Golding says that the deal was not for a new boat. "It was sufficient sponsorship in order for MGYR as a business to take the initiative to build a new boat. It is not Ecover’s boat - it is MGYR’s boat. We are not contractually obliged to give them this boat, but that is the deal we have done with them. It is hard because it is the same players, but it is a different story."

Aside from wanting to develop MGYR, Golding says that keeping the boat in the team will be better value. If they sold it, it would only sell the boat and, importantly, not the know-how that goes with it born of 4-5 years of intensive development.

In terms of who will get the old boat, Golding says it will not be an easy decision. Thoughts turn to the problems Offshore Challenges have been having trouble raising Vendee sponsorship for Nick Moloney, despite him being a top sailor with an America's Cup and Whitbread background and being all-round brilliant, media-friendly guy.

"We are in active discussions with people," says Golding. "A lot of people want to drive the boat but to find someone who can command the money required to do it is another thing. We are talking to all sorts, individuals seeking sponsorship, or who already have sponsors and we’re talking about other projects beyond the one we’re announcing. At the moment I am feeling quite bullish about our prospects of keeping both boats in operation - if not more."

The boat

Coming from the design house of Merfyn Owen and Alan Clark, who form the core of Owen-Clark Design Group, the new Ecover looks very similar in hull shape to both Kingfisher and Graham Dalton's Hexagon, but is of course a development.

"It is designed to win the Vendee. Where we have been able to accommodate other races such as fully crewed without penalty, then we have done that," Merfyn Owen sums up Golding's design brief. Previously Open 60s have been optimised towards the downwind and reaching conditions experienced in the Southern Ocean. These days the trend is to look for more all-round performance. As a result more effort has been put into improving upwind speed (one only has to look at Geronimo's arduous return trip up the Atlantic to see how vital this is). "We think we have improved all round, except perhaps in very light, drifting conditions," says Owen.

The new Open 60 has a swing keel, twin rudders and a narrower beam than the old Groupe Finot design. Owen says that they have carried out some more tank testing on hull shapes at the Wolfson Unit, looking at volume distribution in the hull as well as the effect of water ballast on fore and aft trim. Structurally they have upped their game by using an America's Cup designer to carry out CFD on the daggerboards. They have also used finite element analysis for the keel and mast.

"One of the great advantages of this process has been Mike's input," says Owen. "He has been able to tell us a lot about how he sails the boat and the kind of boat he wants, whereas previously with the Kingfisher campaign we haven't had so much input. Of course Ellen could give us loads of input now."

Although the illustrations show the new Ecover as having a fixed rig, Golding says they are keeping their powder dry about this. "We haven’t finalised that choice yet. And some of these things we want to preserve a slight competitive advantage if we can." The thinking is that in a match race scenario a wingmast would certainly be the best option, while in a Vendee Globe with one person on board and where the boats are not driven to their full potential, the benefits of the more powerful rig may not be so great. There is a similar argument over mainsail size - boats with smaller mainsails with less roach seemed to be more successful in the last Vendee. However Owen says the boat will be generally more powerful than Kingfisher.

A significant difference is the cockpit layout, which like Hexagon has an open ended cockpit and twin wheels rather than the awkward twin tiller arrangement found on a majority of Open 60s, normally requiring the helmsman to perch precariously on the aft deck. "When we did the analysis of weight versus cost versus functionality versus what the boats actually do now, you see the circuit has changes quite a lot towards more fully crewed events," explains Golding. It is also felt that the open cockpit arrangement, similar to Volvo boats, will help the cockpit drain faster (although Open 60s have traditionally had enclosed cockpits to help prevent the skipper being washed over the transom).

Golding claims that previously the reason for chosing twin tillers was weight. Today wheel steering is only 10kg heavier. It also frees up the cockpit in terms of winch positioning and obviously is more ergonomic when the boat is being sailed fully crewed. Golding adds that in shorter, more intense singlehanded races such as the Route du Rhum, skippers are now spending more time helming rather than leaving it to the autopilot. Similarly the new boat also has a coffee grinder fitted. Golding thinks that most of the new Open 60s will go in this direction and it is not hard to see the Open 60 concept moving more in the direction of the new Volvo Ocean 70.

A more dangerous decision potentially is their choice not to go for a rudder cassette system which allows the rudders to be changed in the event of collision as Thierry Dubois did on the third leg of Around Alone. However one of the side aftects of having twin daggerboards is that the twin rudders are better protected, believes Owen. He says the rudders will be beefed up and they will still have a sacrificial tip. Golding may also carry an emergency rudder that would be transom hung.

The boards will be asymmetric and will also be longer than those on the old boat as this has been key to getting reasonable performance to windward - the keel foil on a canting keel tends not to provide lift. All the foils and rudder stocks are being built in an autoclave. Unlike the previous Ecover the new keel blade will be built in steel rather than carbon fibre.

Down below improvements have been made to the living area and in particular to the all-important chart table seat where there will be inclinable seats up to weather on both sides of the chart table as well as a much smaller stool directly in front of the chart table that will move on rails. There are forward and aft ballast tanks, but no central ballast (as Kingfisher has).

Golding says the decision to build in New Zealand was mainly one of cost but also because they had trouble finding a build slot at JMV Industries in Cherbourg, where the old boat was construction or any other prefered yards in France or the UK.

The boat is due to be launched in New Zealand in mid to late June (mid-winter in the Southern hemisphere) and will be taken up to Auckland to be rigged. Southern Spars are building the mast while North France are making the sails.

The new Ecover will be shipped back to the UK and her first race will be the Transat Jacques Vabre.

Golding sums up: "I think what’s really exciting is that we were going to be gunning at the Vendee with a new boat. I’m just over the moon. And the boat is looking really hot. They’re doing a beautiful job down there at Southern Ocean."

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